Discussion of the hard ones:
Does upstream contributino qualifies to become a member?
For openSUSE related stuff like infrastructure (eg. OBS) yes, for
software (KDE, Mono) no. But we shoudn't be "Heiliger als der Papst"
(more catholic than the pope).

To clarify - this means the current opinion is that upstream project
developers who are only users of openSUSE wouldn't qualify?

-JP
--
JP Rosevear <jpr@xxxxxxxxxx>
Novell, Inc.

The question came up more for those of us who are new on the board and
grasping an understanding of how membership applications were approved
in the past. It was not a declaration of a hard and fast rule that
applies to any Novell employee.

What we were asking was whether or not a blanket rule should be applied
where if you're a Novell employee, do you automatically get approval if
you apply? Although we're still sifting through the backlog of
applications, we have found that generally the Novell applicants have
met the test for approval, as any other applicant. The requirements for
anyone, Novell employee or not, is that there has to be some meaningful
contribution to the project. Some examples include:

- Filing bug reports
- Participating on the mailing lists
- Contributing to the wiki
- Providing online support (e.g., IRC support channels)
- Advocacy/evangelism/projects that promote the use of openSUSE
- Coding/Packaging/etc.

The above list of examples is definitely not exhaustive and we look at
each applicant individually. (Hence why it takes so much time to
process memberships.) We believe that providing such a litmus test adds
real value to the prestige of becoming a member of the openSUSE
Project.

One applicant who was rejected by the last board came to me and asked
what he needed to do to become approved in the future. I explained that
he needed to provide real contribution to the project. His response was
that he appreciated that and that when his application does get approved
eventually, he'll have real honor for accomplishing this.

We have no intention of setting the bar too high that it becomes
extremely difficult to become a member. However, simply being a user,
whether an employee of Novell or not, does not meet the litmus test.